'I told myself, I just have to get there': An abandoned boy's search for his biological mum

By Jo Townsend| 2 years ago

Joel De Carteret’s incredible tale of getting lost and found, and of taking the long way home, is nothing short of a Hollywood blockbuster ... and to hear Joel tell the story, it’s uncannily like the movie script for LION.

Joel’s story begins in the poor outskirts of Manila. He was separated from his mother, and at just 5 years old ended up wandering around a crowded and chaotic marketplace.

Luckily for Joel, now 35, a kind taxi driver saw his distress. Joel says; “I was so lucky, I was so lucky that a decent man saw that this boy was lost, and he had a choice, whether to take advantage or do the right thing. If it wasn’t for him I could have ended up, who knows where I could have ended up.”

Joel ended up at a Manila orphanage – and it wasn’t long before he was adopted by his Australian mum, Julie De Carteret. She says of the tiny boy they adopted in Manila; “He was a dear little boy. He looked beautiful and he had a lovely little nature.”

Julie and Joel share a very close bond as mother and son. But Julie has always been emotionally torn about her role as adoptive mum. She says; “I often think that my happiness has been at the expense of another woman losing her child and that’s really hard to process. I can’t imagine how a person just gets out of bed after going through something like losing their son”.

Julie wasn’t surprised when Joel eventually told her that he’d decided to return to the Philippines to look for his birth mother – but she was worried for him. With no information whatsoever about his birth mother, in a country of 100 million people, the chances of finding Joel’s birth mother were next to nothing. Julie says of her concern; “I was worried about how he would be able to move on when he didn’t find his mother. In my mind it wasn’t ‘if’ he didn’t find her it was ‘when’ because there was no name, there was no birth date, there was no region, there was nothing to go on in the adoption records. I have always in my heart just though that it was just a brick wall that he would strike.”

Joel says of the daunting task; “It’s just so hard - like where do I start? It was just, I told myself, I just have to get there. When I get there I’ll just figure it out. “

But Joel was incredibly determined. And so, with the blessing of his Aussie mum, Joel set out in search of his Philippino biological mother.

After two months of fruitless searching, incredibly, two women emerged.

Both had children lost in that same Manila marketplace in the mid-1980s, and both had credible tales about how Joel could be their long-lost missing son.

How will Joel decide which mother is his true biological mum?

The Long Way Home airs on 60 Minutes Sunday June 4, after The Voice on Channel Nine